May 27, 2011 - See Notice NOT-OD-11-080 This Notice serves to remind investigators and institutions that the NIH has the authority to withdraw an application from review and funding consideration for egregious cases in which the Appendix or certain sections of the applications are used to circumvent page limits or include inappropriate material in the application.

November 24, 2010 (NOT-OD-11-021) - This Notice serves as a reminder of several policies affecting the submission of NIH grant applications for the January 25, 2011 due date and thereafter.

NOT-OD-07-018 - New Limits on Appendix Materials for All NIH/AHRQ/NIOSH Grant Applications Beginning with Receipt Dates On or After January 3, 2007

The implementation of shorter page limits, limited number of publications in the biographical sketch, and the restructured research plan as part of the NIH Enhancing Peer Review initiative are cause for reminding applicants of NIH policy regarding materials that are acceptable in a grant application appendix. The current SF424 R&R Application Guides (General, SBIR/STTR and Individual Fellowship) and the PHS 398 Grant Application instructions contain policy requirements that either implement or supersede NOT-OD-07-018 (New Limits on Appendix Materials for All NIH/AHRQ/NIOSH Grant Applications Beginning with Receipt Dates On or After January 3, 2007). Please refer to the Appendix section of each application instructions for current policy.

Applicants are always encouraged to be as concise as possible while containing the information needed for expert scientific review, and are specifically prohibited from using the Appendix to circumvent page limitations in the Research Plan, such as the single page limit for Specific Aims or the specified page limit for the Research Strategy. If inappropriate material is included in an appendix (e.g., an extension of the Specific Aims or Research Strategy section) then the Scientific Review Officer (SRO) will instruct peer reviewers not to read or consider the material in their review of the application. In particularly egregious cases NIH has the authority to withdraw the application from review or consideration for funding.

Applicants should pay particular attention to any Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs) which include appendix requirements that differ from the standard requirements included in the application guides and instructions cited above. Some FOAs do not allow appendix materials or contain other limitations on the materials that may be included, e.g., the FOA NIH Support for Conferences and Scientific Meetings (Parent R13/U13) limits appendix materials to announcements and reports of previous conferences/meetings under the same sponsorship. When instructions in an FOA differ from the general application instructions, the instructions in the FOA always supersede the general instructions.